Quality beans from Gwo Chwal, known for producing one of Haiti’s best coffee beans, once sold for $.30 a pound. Today, Japanese roasters are buying it for $5.50.

A small coffee collective, Café COCANO, is expecting to double exports of its organically grown coffee – already available on the internet and in Italian espresso shops – to high end South Florida grocers.

Earlier this year, the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund provided $1 million to Root Capital, a non-profit social investment fund focusing on rural businesses in developing nations, to help boost small businesses in Haiti. One of its first loans, $150,000, went to COOPCAB, the Thiotte coffee growers. The money since has been paid back with interest.

A drug war in Mexico. Blossoming trade with China. Booming economies and runaway currencies. Land reform. From Mexico to the southern tip of Patagonia, ¿Que pasa? analyzes the political, social and economic forces at work in 21st-century Latin America.